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Book of Grudges

Burlok is dead, its remains smouldering in ashes. Kaja the dwarven Rune Priest stands ‘tall’ and looks around. She has a choice of new homes, aside from Karak-Azgal where the evil Ailil bounces on her disk.

Ok, I’ll prob move her to Karak Eight Peaks on monday. No idea what the new guild is doing, but these days I’m more of a soloer. And it sounded like a fun server on saturday.

RP server closures are sad to me, because they offer something that you just don’t find elsewhere. But WAR demands on numbers, and equality. And the numbers are so LOW on the RP servers, that these moves are inevitable. And wherever I go, I’ll be using Flimgoblin’s awesome new RP addon.

Hrrm, the move is on the same day my 6-month sub runs out. I was going to take a few weeks break from the game and then continue playing and move any new WAR commentary to my more general blog: Nerf the Cat. Yes folks, after a new breath of life for the Age of Blogging, the Book of Grudges is most definitely coming to an end.

It shows how things have progressed in 7 months. I’ve gone from uber-excited about every announcement, to slightly cynical and needing proof of things. I gave up on end-game and enjoyed the simplicity of tiers 1 and 2, and could play those all the time! I look forward to the Land of the Dead ‘expansion’ stuff. But I miss my guild, my friends, my server – and let’s face it, Book of Grudges is in no way as good as it was when I shared duties with Spinks and Hawley.

I am determined to keep an eye on WAR, I hope I enjoy my new server when I get back to playing there. It’s going to be a bit weird to make sure my friends (whose subs have run out) get to the same server. I’m not even sure it’s possible, so that will be seriously upsetting for all of us. I even got some great ideas for WAR blog posts at the pub gathering over the weekend. Those posts will be on Nerf the Cat, however. Not here.

Thanks to all for reading, commenting, visiting and keeping us in the feed-reader! It’s definitely appreciated.

In the April 2009 US WAR newsletter we get a mention in the sidebar. That’s always a nice shout-out, but still leaves me with a bit of a feeling Mythic are a little out-of-date with some of their fan/community info. Here’s the quotation that actually made me laugh out loud:

“arbitrary, Hawley, and Spinks, three lovely MMO-playin’ ladies”

I’d like to state for the record, that although lovely, Hawley is VERY MUCH a man!

The rest of the newsletter makes really interesting reading though, from podcasts on Land of the Dead, Live Event details for the Beyond the Sands and Rise of the Tomb Kings events, Dungeon details for the Necropolis, and new mounts!!!!!!!

Ok, so the pictures of the new mounts made me a little jealous and giddy, they look amazing (manticore and griffin). But reality soon set in, it’s for the recruit-a-friend programme, which we don’t have in the EU. And you need to recruit 6 subscribers. That’s a hell of a lot. A little bit too much to just fake and buy for yourself, even if you were crazy enough to do so.

Both the EU and US newsletters also have a list of events that the WAR team will be coming to in the coming year, so they’re definitely worth checking out from that angle. The EU team will be at Dreamhack, Cologne Games Day and GameCon, UK Games Day, Paris Festival de Jeu and Poznan Arena Pl.

We’ll be at the London get-together on 9th May from 4pm onwards at the Cittie of York pub in Holborn. If you can make it, pop in and say hi. While Hawley won’t be there since he can’t make it, but at least me and Spinks will be there to show off our authentic female-ness!

Enough niceness, eh? Bloggers, and in can be assumed others in the community, are testing out other games until WAR gets fixed or until the Land of the Dead brings people back to the game. Hell, it’s what I’m doing. I’m even sometimes choosing grinding in LotRO over what it plainly fun about WAR – Tier 1 and an alt on many nights. People are doubting their subscriptions.

And Mythic? Mythic are tied to their desks trying to fix stuff and bring in new stuff that will need fixing with their lesser numbers in QA and elsewhere. The game needs these fixes and changes, and they’ve been promised to us. A number of people I know are pretty excited about Land of the Dead but not really bothered about much before, so this ‘live expansion’ is very important to Mythic, don’t mistake that. If it all goes wrong, it might be the end of a number of subs on both sides of the pond. The community is flagging a little and could do with pepping up.

Not heard of Paul visiting many blogs recently, or even updating his own. And that’s the problem with community involvement, once you start it, people expect it to continue. I expect these luminaries of Mythic to be doing all they used to do, marketing-wise, even when it’s unfeasible from a grander scale. But I’m sure there will be a ramp-up in community chatter and involvement with the Land of the Dead, there needs to be!

I’m finding WAR quite suitable for a casual game, but that also means if something more interesting comes up, WAR gets dropped for the night. I still enjoy the game when I play it, but even that’s somewhat because I’ve disengaged myself from the endgame, I’ve heard too much about it being unsatisfying, and I know I enjoy sleeping, so I don’t go to city sieges or defences, preferring to try new characters and play them through Tiers 1 and 2, safe in the knowledge I have my preferred char at rank 40 just in case I need a top level character.

WAR needs enthusiasm. It needs to be fun. If you’re not enjoying it, try alting, or play another game and keep your eye on info about the ‘expansion’.

We (ie. me & Spinks), along with some of our friends, will be at the Cittie of Yorke pub in Holborn, London, having drinks and discussing WAR and probably all sorts of related things. And we’d love it if you could come along, with friends, guildies, forum friends, anyone at all who’d like to join a get-together of London WAR players, friends and family!

The address of the pub is 22 Holborn, WC1V 8BN and we’ve booked the front room for 4pm onwards. Nearest Tube stations are Chancery Lane, Holborn and Farringdon and you can see what the pub looks like and get an idea of its location and reviews, etc from the Beer in the Evening website. The Transport for London Journey Planner can help you get info about how to get to Holborn from anywhere else in London and is a really useful tool.

It’s a good weekend to be in London anyway, since Star Trek is released on 8th May!! We picked the weekend especially, but also because it avoids bank holidays, when travel is always more expensive.

Anyway, would be great to get as big a turn-out as possible, so I’d be grateful if you could spread the word on the forums and guild channels that you use on a regular basis. If it’s successful, who knows, there could be many more such fan get-togethers which could eventually form the basis for something a little more official. That being said, I know the gang from GOA are hoping to send people along, so it’s a chance to hang out, talk WAR, and drink (naturally!).

I would now make a reference to London as the Inevitable City but I’m kind of tired, so you’ll have to wait to see me in person for my razor-sharp wit!

(and for the record, a few of us are hoping to see Star Trek at the IMAX the night before, but it might get complicated to organise for too many people – but if you are there, I’m sure we could say hello in true British fashion – ie. with a drink).

This week I’m going to do a quieter shout-out, concentrating only on one site – Breakfast at WAR. It has a humour to it, multiple authors and really good articles that everyone should have in their feed readers.

Recently, Omelettez has given us an interesting perspective on being a female gamer – one I share in many respects, though I’m struggling with a few of my own demons right now!

And, as if to scratch another of my itches, Pancakez, the same week, has written a post that compares healers in WAR and makes me think about my class choices, before I remember which one I enjoy playing more…

Book of Grudges has been lucky enough to have received two awards lately from other bloggers and now we’re ready to spread the love!

Regis over at Wizards & Wenches gave us a Sticky Keyboard award, because we know he loves all the cute animals (and prints them out and puts them on his wall!). Honestly, it means a lot Regis, don’t pay attention to my humour.

And then, Bootae’s Bloody Blog gave us an award too! Out of the blue and very humbling, and always surprised but happy by attention to the blood splatter!

Now, these awards come with some stipulations and it’s my turn to carry them out:

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.

Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

So, I give you my 7 picks for a BoGgy Award:

Stylish Corpse – started with WAR, quickly moved on to be an entertaining read covering any number of MMOs from the very charming Ysharros. If you don’t read it, you should. And then follow her on Twitter!

Spinksville – Book of Grudges would be nothing without Spinks, who agreed to come on board and write a blog with me after I had a particular daft idea one day. She gave BoG most of it’s great content, I think we can all agree.

Syp’s new project – Bio Break – because I would have nominated Waaagh, for all the reasons I made in my post about Waaagh closing. Syp was a massive help when we started blogging and has continued to support the community intensely. Think Mythic should have sent him more presents, so this award will have to do (just wipe off the blood splatter).

Gaming Granny – Esri is another of us female bloggers, one who shares our love for cute animals pictures and that can’t be overlooked. She used to be in charge of the White Lion blog, but has moved on to more general topics here, and again, always worth reading.

Josh Drescher – to get back on topic, he has the most updated and bloglike of the WAR ‘pros’ blogs (Sorry Paul, I hate Myspace and don’t love video blogging though I appreciate it spawns greatness). And for that, he gets an award.

Adventures in Figuring out MMO Design – Iain C, for again, giving us a huge amount of help and support in the early days of the blog and when you could. Also because although this blog isn’t updated all that often,when it is, it’s always interesting and thought provoking.

Killed in a Smiling Accident – they get the award for being purely awesome. Great guys, great blog, always makes me smile (if not laugh!) and I boggle at their ability to entertain while still making some really valid points. If you don’t read it, you should get in trouble.

I have a lot more I could have awarded, and 7 is quite hard, but anyway, there’s my choices as of today at 6:30am. An also-ran would probably be May Contain Gamers, which is Codemasters’ blog and shows everything I think a gaming company blog should be!

So that was just a delaying tactic and now you need 10 facts about me.

I hate cheese (unless it’s toasted nearly to death or doesn’t taste of cheese – ie. Philadelphia). I know, people think this makes me weird

I had a female rat called Elvis who was one of the BEST pets ever

I was once HM Treasury’s webmaster

I lived in Gainesville, FL for two years with my husband, before returning to the UK

I want an Aibo really badly, and can no longer explain why (since I now have cats who would prob be scared of said Aibo). Damn you Sony for stopping making them!

I’m a middle sister, though I swear I don’t have middle child syndrome/complex – really!

My hair has been purple, green, red, blonde, I’ve had a mohawk and I’ve been a skinhead 4 times. None since I reached 30, but I always threaten to go skinhead again

I intend to get another tattoo before the year ends. I currently have blue daisies around my ankle, but I’ve just found a new design I like… so now it’s all about getting over being a slacker

I was nearly expelled from a primary school. It never went past the stage of being asked to leave, because I did. And my parents found me a much better school anyway! So nyeh!

I went to New College, Oxford and did a degree in English Language and Literature. I’m not very proud of this, I’m adding it because it’s prob the most shocking fact about me I can think of as I’m not the type and discuss it very rarely

The biggest name in WAR blogging is leaving behind his Waaagh blog and moving to a more general gaming blog at Bio Break. I know how he feels on any number of levels and wish him all the best in his new blog, which I always enjoy reading anyway!)

Really, I know from experience it’s not easy to close a blog, especially one that has a bit of a name for itself. And I know the draw to talk about more than one game, which is specifically why Spinks moved to Spinksville and I mostly moved to Nerf the Cat (but bizarrely Book of Grudges came back for the Age of Blogging month and hasn’t quite died again.. yet!).

Syp has always been a great supporter of blogs, blogging and the community. When he left us one of our first comments, we were really touched that someone so big had found our little experiment. And his support helped us to keep going, so while Waaagh will be missed, I look forward to continuing to read his work over at Bio Break.